I did mention I sold all my stocks and took the
dollars and moved them into Czech crowns last month.
I would recommend anyone else to do the same. I wish
I had done it 7 years ago. I would have more than
doubled my money.

Excerpt:

Speculators, investors, and central bankers have
figured out that the US government and the Bernanke
Fed will not protect the dollar - not when millions
of Americans are having trouble making their
mortgage payments. The US money supply is
increasing - nearly five times faster than GDP
growth. And now, fearing a Japan-style deflation,
the Fed is likely to cut rates later this month.The
Chinese have one of the largest dollar piles in the
world.“Is China quietly dumping US Treasuries?”
asks Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in the English
press.“A sharp drop in foreign holdings of US
Treasury bonds over the last five weeks has raised
concerns that China is quietly withdrawing its
funds from the United States, leaving the dollar
increasingly vulnerable.”

Wow, revelation. When you take out oil and housing
prices from the Consumer Price Index it looks pretty
good. Magic! Put them back in, not so much so.

Excerpt:

"In 1983, the Bureau of Labor Statistics [BLS]
was faced with an awkward dilemma. If it continued
to include the cost of housing in the Consumer
Price Index, the CPI would reflect an inflation
rate of 15%, thereby making the country's economy
look like a banana republic. Worse, since investors
and bond traders have historically demanded a 2%
real return after inflation, that would mean that
bond and money market yields could climb as high as
17%."Yikes! What to do, what to do, what to do
whattodowhattodo? "The BLS's solution was as simple
as it was shocking: exclude the cost of housing as
a component in the CPI, and substitute a so-called
'Owner Equivalent Rent' component based on what a
homeowner might 'rent' his house for." Hahaha! The
government resorts to lying! "Wow! Why didn't we
think of this before?" they are heard to ask among
themselves. Fortunately for the government, it
worked. "The result of this statistical sleight of
hand was immediate and gratifying," Mr Hardaway
writes, "for the reported inflation index quickly
dropped to 2%"

A good and quick summary of what the fed doesn't do
to help the average person.

Excerpt:

Besides having created the mortgage-liquidity
nightmare, Greenspan and the Fed can also chalk up
another accomplishment: inflation. Inflation is so
serious that it has more than wiped out any income
gains coming to the majority of families in the
past seven years.The New York Times reports that
"Americans earned a smaller average income in 2005
than in 2000, the fifth consecutive year that they
had to make ends meet with less money than at the
peak of the last economic expansion, new government
data shows. While incomes have been on the rise
since 2002, the average income in 2005 was $55,238,
still nearly 1 percent less than the $55,714 in
2000, after adjusting for inflation, analysis of
new tax statistics show."